A temporary home and repository for television and film critic Daniel Fienberg, formerly of HitFix.com and Zap2it.com and one half of The Firewall & Iceberg Podcast.

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's 'Blood and Oil' aka 'Oil Tree Hill'

[You know the drill,
and I will continue to mention it in each and every one of these posts
that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often
for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual
reviews may be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe
midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to
not-for-air pilots. I know some people will be all "These are reviews."
If you've read me, you've read my reviews and you know this isn't what
they look like.]

Show: "Blood and Oil" (ABC)The Pitch: "Oil Tree Hill" has replaced "The Nate Archibald & Cappie Oil Hour" as my title for this one.Quick Response: "Blood and Oil" may be my biggest disappointment of the fall, but it's entirely possible that the disappointment is built entirely on my flawed expectations and not on the series itself. I've seen "The Overnighters" and several other New American Boomtown documentaries, so I know that there's an awesome, high-stakes human story developing in the Dakotas that can be told sensationally with only minor soap-y embellishment, think "Deadwood 2015." But "Blood and Oil" wants to be "Longitudinally Elevated Dallas" and nothing more. It's a choice that is totally valid, but if you go in wanting cable-style nuance and grounding from "Blood and Oil," you'll probably laugh for five minutes and quit. If you go in expecting "Nashville" -- a more logical expectation, I admit -- well, there's guilty pleasure potential here, I guess. [Note that for a soap opera, "Blood and Oil" isn't vaguely steamy. Dunno if that's a directing problem, a lack of chemistry between actors or what.] If "Blood and Oil" wanted to be better, it needed a leading man less bland than Chace Crawford though, in the interest of full credit, Crawford is more plausibly human here than he ever was on "Gossip Girl." Scott Michael Foster fares a bit better because Cappie is playing Evan -- You're welcome, "Greek" fans -- or at least Unreconstructed Evan, as a petulant rich boy with daddy issues. The high stakes -- it's right there in the title -- don't give Rebecca Rittenhouse the chance to showcase the humor that was her best asset on "Red Band Society," but she's still got a '50s ingenue kinda wide-eyed expressiveness about her that I dig and that could find purchase here. Early footage made it look like Don Johnson was playing the JR here, but at least in the early going it's nothing nearly that fun, but at least he's sturdy. Delroy Lindo is horribly, tragically, inexplicably underused in the pilot, but "Horribly, Tragically, Inexplicably Underused" could be the title of Delroy Lindo's autobiography. I recommend more Delroy Lindo going forward. I also recommend either steering away from the Native American stuff or doing it better, because the line "Whoever kills a spirit animal is cursed" from a never-seen-again NA character got my biggest laugh from any drama or comedy pilot this year. There are a lot of giggles in the "Blood and Oil" pilot, actually, a lot of heightened drama moments that play a bit more silly than perhaps intended, but one man's giggle is another man's (or woman's) giddy glee when it comes to slo-mo flipping cars or grown men mud-wrestling. At least the reactions are visceral, eh? I mean, I wanted provocative and "Blood and Oil" provokes.Desire To Watch Again: Now that I know not to expect "Oil Tree Hill" to be GOOD, I'm perfectly willing to watch a couple more episodes. I watched two seasons of "Revenge," three seasons of "Nashville" and I'll watch some of this as well for the parts of the cast that I like. The pilot also ends with a good cliffhanger, or at least a cliffhanger that I'm curious to see resolved.

3 comments:

"I also recommend either steering away from the Native American stuff or doing it better, because the line "Whoever kills a spirit animal is cursed" from a never-seen-again NA character got my biggest laugh from any drama or comedy pilot this year."

That's an apt reaction. The Keystone Pipeline is a huge deal w/ SD natives at this moment. And a demonstration was staged just the day after this post was published. The resistance is primarily ecologically motivated and is tied to spirituality that also concurs with science. The repercussions envisioned are not some mystic karmic retribution for killing a single critter or so, but logical outcomes of destroying the land that sustains us. The land/earth is viewed as sacred and Pope Francis is currently attempting to restructure Catholicism in the same light. It's not an exotic concept, or at least, it shouldn't be! These are issues that affect us all and isn't based on some backward contrived non-native mumbo-jumbo view of native spirituality.

Tribal rights are being trampled by Big Oil and the recourse leaders are taking is through legal avenues that keep on shutting them down and out. They have not been properly consulted as they should according to law. Civil disobedience is brewing because it is the only way their voices can be heard. Not only do they speak for their peoples as a whole, but they are speaking on behalf of all of us. Rationally.

Why "Oil Tree Hill"? I enjoy your sense of humor, and am good with jokes for the sake of jokes. Just trying to figure out if I'm missing something, whether an obvious joke or if you're trying to say something about the show without spelling it out. The non-review makes mention of themes from other shows and previous actor roles, including Gossip Girl, Dallas, Greek, and Nashville. I don't see anything about basketball, half-brother/genealogical rivalries, or towns where no one leaves but everyone is somehow an entrepreneurial genius.

Meaty premise covering what is a CW-level soap? And since it's set in the faux wilderness/mountains of "North Dakota"? And about oil? Works for me, even without the direct ties you mentioned, though certainly the Nate/Cappie rivalry that's set up in the premiere could be Different-Nate/Lucas-esque, albeit without actual blood...